A Clear Eyed Endorsement of Psychoanalytic Therapy

Psychoanalytic therapy is effective for many millions of people, but somehow this remains a topic of debate within the media. Thankfully there are voices such as this one explaining why psychoanalytic therapy works, and doing so with measured, rational language that anyone can understand:

‘One of the distinguishing features of psychoanalysis is that it focuses on people's experience rather than just their behaviour,’ says Keogh. In doing so, he believes that psychoanalysis has a particularly important role to play in helping people who have experienced ‘very protracted and intense developmental histories’, such as ongoing abuse.

But abuse alone cannot explain the great number of people who seek out psychoanalytic therapy; there must be something else at work. Indeed, our understanding of the human unconscious is the key, as it undergirds a great many issues of anxiety, compulsion and depression which touch us all:

However, he adds that tapping into the unconscious may also help people with recurrent problematic behaviour, where the patient cannot pinpoint a reason for their distress. ‘So we are very interested also in that which is not immediately conscious to patients, that may have some bearing on their emotional pain and the problems that they recurrently suffer,’ says Keogh.

PPSC is the nation’s leader at integrating the best ideas from analytic therapy with other modalities such as mindfulness. Our ultimate goal is to help our patients with the issues that ail them, and do so in a safe environment where the many benefits of talk therapy can flower. To find a therapist in New York today, contact us.

Dispelling the Mysteries of Psychotherapy

As one of the premiere New York psychoanalytic therapy programs, we field a lot of questions from patients who want to understand how this sort of talk therapy compares to other techniques. The short answer is that we are principally concerned with causes, not symptoms: analytic therapy’s mission is to understand what lies behind the issues of depression, anxiety, doubt and other concerns. But there is perhaps an even simpler answer, published recently in this short column:

Psychotherapy works very simply – it enables you to see things about yourself or your life that you can't currently see and that is affecting how you feel, what you do, and what happens to you. Once you can see what has been making the things happen that have been happening, you can get your hands around it and do something to improve how you feel, what you do, or what happens to you.

The best reason to get into psychotherapy is relief: relief from pain, sadness, isolation, stress. Some of these elements originate in the world around us, but others originate from within, powered by many years of personal history. Talking through these personal stories is a way to steal their power, and to make sense of the choices we all make on a daily basis.

At PPSC, we specialize in low cost therapy, sliding scale therapy, and LGBT therapy throughout New York and the region. If you are looking for a specific area of expertise, don’t hesitate to find a therapist at PPSC today.

How Psychotherapy Helps Depression

A recent Dutch study was intended to explore whether psychotherapy can be helpful for treatment the symptoms of depression in diabetics. Because the study was randomized and controlled, a number of respected journalists have pointed to the study as good strong evidence of the efficacy of psychotherapy for depression:

Results revealed that both MBCT and CBT have persistent beneficial impact on depressive symptomatology and related symptoms, validating the evidence from previous researches regarding the long-term clinical outcomes of either MBCT or CBT.

Both psychotherapy methods (MBCT and CBT) are effective in treating depressive symptoms in a variety of clinical populations.

Although the study only focused on two modalities: MBCT, or Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy; and CBT, or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, it nonetheless showed strong value in the notion that depression can be treated with talking rather than through medications alone. Psychoanalytic, or psychodynamic therapy, wasn’t included in the study, but we know from similar research that all modalities tend to show something close to parity over short time frames when it comes to issues of depression.

Analytic therapy can also produce longer results that are slower and therefore harder to measure, partly because psychotherapy resists easy quantification. Yet we know that therapy designed to treat the root causes of depression can result in lasting relief, especially in individuals who don’t show a genetic or neurochemical predisposition to hopelessness.

Our depression therapy experts are among the finest therapists in New York, and our extensive training courses have developed top-rated Boston counselors, Philadelphia psychotherapists, and many more professionals. To begin speaking with an experienced analytic therapist today, contact PPSC.

A Poignant Piece About the Special Space of Psychoanalytic Therapy

A number of psychoanalytic therapists have been passing around this beautifully written piece from the New York Times. In it, the writer describes the strong and respectful relationship she always shared with the therapists who occupied the office next to her own. It is an unusual relationship: these are figures she sees several times a week, but they are people with whom she maintains a respectful distance, as accorded by the psychoanalytic endeavor and its emphasis on discretion. When one of those doctors grew slowly sick and eventually succumbed to illness, she was moved more than she ever would have thought possible:

Why am I sharing this small story? Perhaps because I love that psychoanalysis is a frame through which I have permission to pay close attention to peripheral vision, to things that are out of focus and not so conscious. Enigmatic dreams, childhood memories and mourning are all welcome, and they open me to my own feelings and to a wider range of human experiences.

Psychoanalytic therapy is about a great many things: communication, trust, exploration and facing that which is hard. It’s also about the small interactions that surround the therapeutic space, and how they cultivate a climate of emotional mindfulness.

At PPSC, we believe that psychotherapy can serve people’s health in uncountable ways, helping to ease depression, anxiety and a number of related maladies of the soul. If you’re interested in exploring what analytic therapy can do to improve your life, please contact us today.

What to Expect from Low Cost Therapy

Finding good low-cost therapy is often more meaningful than simply nailing down a good price. For many people, sliding scale psychotherapy represents a lifeline. But it can also represent a potentially awkward topic undertaken with their therapist:

Gutheil and Gabbard write, "Money is a boundary in the sense of defining the business nature of the therapeutic relationship. This is not love; it's work" (1993, p. 192). Thus the fee and fee arrangement are important determinants of the nature of the therapeutic process and the boundary of the patient-therapist relationship.

Reaching out to experienced analytic therapists is the easiest way to avoid a protracted negotiation over price. Many of them will have worked out similar arrangements in the past, and become adept at sidestepping some of the difficult and embarrassing parts of this conversation. You may even come away feeling better understood and supported than you did going in.

Working out a good system to evaluate and agree on pricing is a tricky process, but once it’s done, you can move forward with the really fruitful work of psychotherapy. Just watch out for a few familiar pitfalls along the way:

As with any fee arrangement, therapists should try to clearly articulate, preferably in writing, and agree upon the arrangement. The concern with the sliding scale is that it can put therapists and clients in a conflict of interest where clients may have an investment in presenting a scaled down financial picture in order to obtain a lower rate. If this negotiation takes place at the beginning of therapy, it can contaminate the therapeutic relationship. Some factors, such as retirement investments, upcoming inheritance, etc., cannot be easily factored into the equation of the sliding scale.

The moral: be open, speak clearly, and don’t be afraid to ask for what you need. At PPSC, we proudly offer sliding scale therapy for patients across New York. Start here to learn more.

An Ode to Low Cost Therapy

It is an all-too-common complaint: patients are certain they need therapy, but are afraid that they cannot afford the kind of lasting care that’s likely to help. This recent article describes the mindset perfectly, listing common issues such as depression, anxiety and relationship difficulties before concluding:

Any of these types of issues can stretch a person beyond his or her ability to cope. Any of them can challenge the most creative, caring, and responsible person, You’ve tried your best. You’ve tried to look at a brighter side, to be rational, to be smart about whatever it is. But you still can’t figure things out. You still feel alone in your troubles and without the inner resources or the outer supports to change things. This is when people often go to therapy. You wish you could. But you have no insurance and you know it can be costly. The situation seems hopeless.

It’s not. Serious, yes. Hopeless, no.

That’s right: there are good options for low cost therapy in New York. You simply need to do a little homework, and to not be afraid to ask.

Here at PPSC, we proudly offer low cost therapy and sliding scale therapy to patients whose financial circumstances warrant consideration. We are deeply committed to the work of analytic therapy, and that means we make this essential mental health service available to as wide a swath of people as we possibly can.

If you’re looking for a better approach to low cost therapy, please don’t hesitate to contact the professional therapists of PPSC today.

The Power of Psychotherapy for Depression

It is no surprise to those of us who work as psychotherapists that real and substantive changes often result from talk therapy. Often these are subjective and self-reported, which can make it difficult for researchers to verify the many positive effects of psychotherapy. Now a new study has attempted to do just that, quantifying patient responses to a set of emotionally resonant questions by peering inside brain scans to detect levels of activity associated with strong mood swings.

The results were clear: psychotherapy shows a strong and beneficial effect, without any need for drugs or medical intervention:

Psychotherapy, the researchers explained, helps patients accept and gain insight into their dysfunctional relations, and as a result, patients do not become emotionally aroused when they are forced to confront their so-called “issues.” For anyone suffering depression, this study validates the benefits of drug-less psychotherapy. Going forward, the researchers expect to report a second follow-up study after 20 months of treatment.

Dealing with depression through counseling is a commonly accepted approach, and one that many millions of people have successfully undertaken in the last century. Here at PPSC, we offer depression therapy for patients that helps them understand the root issues and patterns that give rise to despairing thoughts. If you’d like to find expert analytic therapy today, contact us here.

Wrestling with Fertility in Analytic Therapy

We have written before about what happens when the veil of privacy lifts between a psychoanalyst and her patient, and about how such personal disclosures (by the therapist) can change the tenor of “the room.” This recent piece explores one of the most common issues that prompts therapists into candid conversations : pregnancy. As the author describes:

Traditional psychoanalytic theories envision the therapist as a blank slate on which patients project their thoughts and fantasies, a distant expert interpreting the patient from behind an inscrutable facade. Patient’s concerns are seen as problems the doctor can “fix” through psychological suturing. Contemporary psychoanalytic viewpoints, by contrast, have given rise to a very different understanding of the therapeutic alliance, one in which the relationship itself is ultimately what’s curative. But the therapist’s quasi-anonymity remains a central tenet. Patients might inquire about a therapist’s personal life, but unless it benefits the patient’s growth to answer the question directly, the therapist usually explores what the question means to the patient.

In practice, such questions become harder to avoid when a visible pregnancy enters the therapeutic space. The author of this piece wrestled with a number of approaches to manage and explore the feelings her growing belly inspired, but the responses for her and patients were often more personally charged than other conversations.

After negotiating a heartbreaking miscarriage and another pregnancy, the author describes how she has come to a sense of accommodation about discussing some personal issues surrounding pregnancy and childbirth with her patients, and how the work is often more beneficial for it:

There was a time when I would have reflexively asked Maya what my maternity might mean to her. But instead I considered revealing a small but profound piece of my life. What I hope to offer my patients now, in both subtle and demonstrative ways — shared and silent — are the arduous lessons learned through personal pain and reflection. Far from a blank slate, but no longer a focal point of the therapeutic relationship, I’ve landed somewhere in between, a much more ideal middle ground.

“Yes,” I began my reply to Maya. “I have two children.”

Psychoanalytic therapy is a deep and lasting process such feelings are worth exploring and where patients can make great strides in a safe space. To speak with an expert psychotherapist in New York today, contact PPSC.

Why Analytic Therapy Works

One of the byproducts of our science media’s sea shift toward evidence-based everything is that those of us who work in psychoanalytic psychotherapy are learning a little more about why this form of therapy works so well. Of course we have always taken an ongoing interest in how it works psychologically, but now there are some focused looks at precisely which parts of this process works the best, for the longest. Take, for instance, this recent piece, which tries to unpack why psychotherapy works when it does, and fails when it does. Unsurprisingly, the great benefit of analytic therapy rests on subjectivity, especially the relationship of transference/countertransference that defines the analytic space:

But we should keep things in proportion. Medications are way overused. Psychotherapy is way underused. Drug complications and overdoses are a serious public health problem. Psychotherapy complications are much less common. And much less severe. It would be a better world were there more therapy, less drugs.

Psychoanalytic therapy is a journey, and millions of people have experienced its lasting results. If you want to unpack some of the issues that may be holding you back, contact the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center in New York City today.

One More Endorsement for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

We wrote recently about the growing number of think pieces dedicated to “rediscovering” psychoanalysis and calling for its return to the mainstream. (Some of us maintained that it never went away, but no matter.) This recent piece in Forbes makes the case as well as any of them, pointing not just to the lasting and substantive benefits of analytic therapy, but also to its increasingly strong showing in a number of empirical analyses:

For example, a 2013 randomized control trial demonstrated the efficacy of psychoanalytic psychotherapy for treating panic disorder. A 2010 meta-analytic review of available outcome studies showed that “empirical evidence supports the efficacy” of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. It further showed that the magnitude of change in psychoanalytic psychotherapy is “as large as those reported for other therapies that have been actively promoted as ‘empirically supported’ and ‘evidence based’.”

But the piece also identifies one of the key criticisms leveled at this kind of therapy, namely that its bespoke nature resists a one-size-fits-all training regime, or testing protocol:

Because psychoanalytic psychotherapy adapts technique to the unique individuality of each patient, it can seem to some like all art and no science. “Where’s the manual!” goes the cry. The fact is that psychoanalytic psychotherapists typically rely on research to guide the moment-to-moment decisions of a clinical encounter, especially infant development research and increasingly neuroscience. If CBT, as a way to illustrate, can be thought of as someone expertly playing sheet music, psychoanalytic psychotherapy is more like well-structured improvisational jazz.

Of course this isn’t a flaw, but the source of psychoanalysis’s prodigious strength—and the reason so many people of different beliefs and predilections find it singularly effective.

Our psychoanalytic therapists offer depression therapy, anxiety therapy, LGBT-friendly therapy and even low-cost therapy right here in New York. To get started right away, click here.

New Findings on the Origins of Depression

As New York City’s premiere source for analytic depression therapy, we hear and read a lot of research about the causes of clinical depression. Recently a pair of stories caught our eye: two studies that have each found a link between the struggles of childhood and depression in adulthood. The one article addresses a strong connection between feelings of excessive guilt in childhood, and depression in later life:

Some scientists now believe that extreme feelings of guilt in children, such as the ones Thomas felt, can be a strong warning sign for mental disorders such as depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), and bipolar disorder later on in life . . . The question is whether guilt causes later life mental disorders or if a biological predisposition to mental disorders causes early symptoms of excessive guilt.

That is indeed the question. The study focused on a particular part of the brain, the anterior insula, whose development may influence emotional health in both stages of life. But the jury is still out on whether biology precedes psychology in this case, or whether it works the other way around. Ultimately the question is moot; what matters is how therapists can treat depression armed with this new knowledge:

Luby says that they are in the early stages of looking at how psychotherapy affects child behavior and how it affects brain function. "We are still in the first year, but my clinical impression is that these kids are getting a lot better," Luby said.

Similar findings have appeared in a second study linking childhood trauma to depression in adulthood. This study perhaps states the obvious, but the accompanying article makes a few valuable points about how patients respond to medical versus talk therapy:

These new studies also have implications with regard to the treatment of depression. Psychiatry, viewing depression for the most part as a chemical imbalance, treats it with chemicals (medications), or in severe cases with electroshock therapy. However, psychotherapists focus on the traumas of childhood and try to bring about change by helping clients to talk through those traumas. Psychotherapy has proven to be effective with all but the most severe cases.

To learn more about how you can find a good depression therapist in New York, including low cost therapy, contact PPSC today.

On the Effectiveness of Psychoanalytic Therapy

Analytic therapy doesn't always play nice with so-called “evidence based medicine,” not least because long-term therapy does not neatly fit into the limited sample sizes and rapid timelines such studies rely upon. More crucially, the subjective improvements that arise from psychodynamic therapy can be hard to quantify and even harder to observe from outside; often they are subtle but essential transitions which resist easy classification. Even so, there is a growing body of research that which consistently confirms the notion that analytic psychotherapy is both useful and persistent:

However, the acid test of the efficacy of any method lies in the availability of hard evidence in the form of research. And, as it happens, we have two recent studies of psychoanalysis that offer evidence of its validity. . . .

The author goes on to describe two recent studies which have demonstrated the power of psychoanalytic therapy. The key, he says, is what makes this therapy unique: the relationship between therapist and patient, and the many ways this relationship can act as a prism for understanding the patient’s deepest issues.

We have seen precisely this dynamic yield extraordinary results time and again. If you’d like to find a therapist in NYC today, including low-cost psychotherapy and experts in many subspecialties, please contact the experts here.

Will This Take Long? Deliberative Psychoanalysis in a Frenzied World

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy does not fit neatly into many modern notions of instant gratification. More probing than CBT, more deliberative than behavioral therapy, psychoanalysis is more like a journey than a jump start: a lengthy and labyrinthine effort which takes the mind itself as its subject. How deep you go is entirely a matter of how much you want to learn. This article imagines a set of answers to the question of how long an analytic therapy should ask, turning the dialogue back on the patient:

The answer I usually give isn’t the one people want to hear, because I answer with a question: “How long should yoga last?” “How long should you study piano?” “How long should you learn chess?”

The entire piece is worth a read, as it nicely describes what happens when the “honeymoon period” ends and the patient begins doing the real work of surfacing unpleasant or uncomfortable feelings. Hang in through this rocky period, however, and it can yield important and life-altering dividends for many years to come:

People who respond to psychoanalytic psychotherapy are people who want to understand themselves. How long will that take? You can stop an archeological dig at any time. Or you can keep digging and see what else turns up. It’s your choice.

To begin your own journey and speak with a New York psychotherapist today, contact the PPSC.

Anna Freud Celebrated by Google

It is a small but significant moment when a distinguished psychoanalyst such as Anna Freud takes over the Internet’s home page for a day. Such was the case this month when Google devoted one of its trademark “doodles” to Ms. Freud’s work and legacy.

As this article describes, Anna Freud deepened and expanded her father’s work, taking a particular interest in the psychology and pathology of children. Her teachings led her to assume a number of prestigious posts, where she continued to preach her singular devotion to the emotional issues of young people:

Freud became a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society after presenting her paper “Beating Fantasies and Daydreams” in 1922 and became a director in 1935 of the Vienna Psychoanalytical Training Institute. . . .

When the second world war broke out, Freud opened the Hampstead War Nursery for children who had been left homeless, and often orphaned, as a result of the conflict. Her research into the impact of stress and separation on children was published along with Dorothy Burlingham.

Although our therapists owe a great deal to the Freuds, we are also proud to offer the vanguard in professional thought about issues such as relationship therapy, depression therapy, and gay-friendly therapy. At PPSC, we also offer low-cost therapy and plenty of flexible choices to patients, young and old, who want to understand themselves and their struggles more clearly.

To learn more about how you can benefit from analytic psychotherapy, start here.

The Power of Psychoanalysis

One of the fascinating things about analytic therapy is that everything goes into the hopper: your life, your feelings, your relationships, your depredations – even your accidents can be grist for therapy. This recent piece in the New York Times highlights a good example of how seemingly random accidents can bring our personal histories to the fore, and help patient and therapist alike discover meaning in something that may have seemed meaningless.

The author’s patient suffered burns over the summer, and the injury and its aftermath underscored some longstanding issues of enmeshment with the patient’s mother. On the subject of her mother’s prurient interest in the extent of these injuries, for instance, the patient reports:

“And my mother replied: ‘It’s my trauma, too. In fact, I think I’m more traumatized by it than you.’”

Sometimes the things we say illuminate far more than we intend, and psychoanalysis is a perfect forum to explore these valences. The mother’s words in this case provide a nice starting to explore what has gone wrong between these two women.

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is the only existing modality that lets us understand our lives and histories from an emotional perspective. As the writer says:

One of the things I miss most about my own analysis is the suddenness with which strange events could emerge, knocking you over backward. And toward the very end it felt as if you could time-travel, bouncing between a past and present whose surface was fabricated by an ancient mythology, the wondrous accident that was your existence.

If you’d like to explore the fundamental psychology that continues to influence your life and choices, please contact PPSC to find a therapist today.

The Struggles of Mental Health Belong to All of Us

It is a familiar tale by now: a mass shooting alarms the nation, and calls go out simultaneously for a change in our gun laws and a tightening of our mental health safety net. Rarely does lasting change arise from these moments, but we may soon be near a tipping point. One psychologist in Congress – indeed, the only psychologist in Congress – is aiming to change this issue with a new legislative effort. His reasons are simple:

Two years after Newtown, the nearly 14 million Americans with serious mental illness must navigate the same patchwork system that failed the nation on December 14, 2012.

Says Murphy: "I ask members of Congress to look those Newtown families in the eye."

We have long endured a patchwork mental health support system in America, and many are now advocating for something like parity with other health issues. Although funding for mental health service has improved, there remain a number of essential loopholes that allow troubled young people to bounce from social worker to therapist to counselor without any unified system to offer consistent support.

At PPSC, we are advocates for the power of therapy, especially if a patient might benefit from analytic therapy which can surface the issues that underlie many violent outbursts. That’s one of the reasons we try to make it easy for patients to afford quality care, with a number of low cost therapy options for New Yorkers who require some pricing flexibility.

To learn more about how you can find essential psychotherapy within your means, please contact PPSC today.

Low Cost Therapy in New York

Finding low cost therapy can be a great relief. Many people who are troubled by depression, anxiety, substance abuse or relationship difficulties are candidates for psychotherapy, but they may not be able to afford the high rates of many New York therapists. There is an easier way. Many of the analytic therapists at PPSC offer sliding scale rates for people who cannot afford the standard rates. That means that patients in search of low cost therapy can typically find a number of good options within our ranks.

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy, or analytic therapy, is an in-depth approach to uncovering and understanding the central issues in any person’s life. Analytic therapy is the most established approach in psychology, a mix of in-depth techniques that build understanding through a process of exploring important memories and emotions.

Our therapists understand that different needs must be met with different compromises. For the gold standard in low-cost and low-fee therapy in New York, please contact the affordable psychotherapists of PPSC today.

When Anxiety Strikes Young

It is not an uncommon sight these days: a teenager, laboring under the gargantuan expectations of today’s schools, suddenly struggling to breathe. The episode is just one of the many outward symptoms of an anxiety disorder; for other people, the issue can manifest as an ongoing sense of dread, panic or overwhelm. Because anxiety can strike at any age, many schools have found themselves hard-pressed to handle each case with the appropriate care:

School counselors and nurses alike have cited increased amounts of stress, pressure, social media, and divorce as causes for this surge in anxiety that has not only affected the teens who suffer but school administrators trying to help their students.

As one administrator put it:

Sevier said she now encounters students with anxiety on a “daily basis.” Thirty years ago, Sevier said she dealt with more “normal” teenage issues, such as conflicts with parents, friends, and significant others. Now, Sevier said she sees more severe cases of anxiety.

Some forms of anxiety respond well to drugs or cognitive-behavioral therapy. Other kinds of anxiety may require a more psychoanalytic approach, as patient and therapist together explore the early experiences that have given rise to the disorder.

Seeking anxiety therapy in New York gets easier when you can tap into a network of analytic therapists who have received special training in easing these symptoms. At PPSC, we are proud to offer low cost psychotherapy for teenagers and adults in search of a lasting solution to anxiety.

To learn more, please contact us here today.

Navigating Transference in Psychotherapy

Most of us who work in psychoanalytic psychotherapy owe a debt to Sigmund Freud, whose first steps defining the field shone a great light on the role of our unconscious minds. Freud’s body of work is not without its flaws, but his insights across a broad diversity of subjects have more or less stood the test of time. One of the issues Freud took particular interest in was the dynamic of the therapist’s office. Analytic therapists are generally discouraged from revealing too much about their personal lives, for fear of staining the therapeutic process with unwelcome details. As a recent New York Times piece described it:

In psychoanalysis, there is a specific rationale for this rule. The theory holds that patients tend to re-enact with therapists the relationships they had with their parents. This is called transference. By paying careful attention to this unfolding drama — as it plays out, right there in the office — the therapist and patient can uncover and resolve childhood conflicts. If a therapist interjects information about herself, she clouds the mirror and compromises the process.

Follow this story to its conclusion, however, and you can see how the benign neutrality of the therapist might come to be seen as a hindrance in some cases, even an act of hostility. In the case study within the piece, a patient desperately needs a sense of reciprocity, even a shallow one, in order to build the trust necessary to do the work:

As therapy continued with her, I heard how flat and tinny I sounded whenever I attempted to analyze what was going on between us. When I lapsed into too clinical a mode, our connection would wobble, and her alienation became palpable.

No two talk therapies are the same, and of course every psychoanalyst develops her own approach and rhythms. Learning and adapting is part of what makes an effective therapy worthwhile, for patient and therapist alike. If you’d like to embark on a journey to address longstanding feeling of depression, anxiety or loneliness, please contact the expert NYC therapists of PPSC today.

Talk Therapy Can Prevent Suicide

An interesting study caught our eye this week: researchers in Denmark followed many thousands of patients suffering with depression, and found that a number of good outcomes were associated with talk therapy:

For up to two decades, the new study followed people who’d attempted suicide once, and found their risk of future suicide declined by more than 25% if they’d received just six to 10 sessions of psychotherapy. Considering that people who have attempted suicide once are significantly more likely to contemplate it again, talk therapy – especially over an extended period of time – may hold a lot of promise for those in the most extreme form of mental pain.

It is an encouraging result which echoes a number of similar studies showing that talk therapy may be just as good as, and in some senses even more effective than, medication alone in the treatment of depression.

Interestingly, the effect was significant enough to persist even after several years:

The participants who’d taken part in talk therapy were 27% less likely to commit suicide again in the first year than people who didn’t have therapy—they were also 38% less likely to die of any cause. The difference was still the same after five years of follow-up, and even remained after 10.

Depression therapy, or psychotherapy aimed at alleviating the symptoms of depression, can take many forms, from cognitive behavioral techniques to more in-depth analytic therapy. Whether you are looking for standard or low-cost therapy, we invite you to contact the experts at PPSC today for a lasting solution to depressive feelings.